Re: The Icon Question

To: "Discussions about the artwork included with Fedora, including icons, themes, and wallpapers." <fedora-art-list redhat com>

Subject: Re: The Icon Question

Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 00:50:53 +0200

Joachim Frieben wrote:

"Bluecurve" has friendly, crisp looking icons due to a well chosen color
scheme, consistent perspective, and noticeable outlines which improve
contrast. Icons are pictograms and as such -simplified- images of real
objects with the aim of easy recognizability. Photorealistic icons are
rather counterproductive, especially at small sizes. The "cartoonish" look
of "Bluecurve" exactly fits this paradigm. In the "GNOME" panels and menus,
a mere 24 pixels is the default size. This has to be kept in mind.
The attached screenshot shows the huge difference between "good" and "bad"
design. The "Bluecurve" package icon is much more distinct than the "puplet"
one (the latter is too small anyway). The new "gnome-power-manager" is
particularly poor. It looks slack and fuzzy and is weakly detached from the
background. The dropshadow make things rather worse. The screenshot speaks
for itself, doesn't it? I find it rather compelling in favour of "Bluecurve".

Wow, quite a mix of styles. I spot icons in old-gnome-style,
tango-style, bluecurve-style and this new fedora-style. Seems like you
landed up in interface hell! :)
About the powermanager-icon, it seems the icon is a bit wierdly scaled,
it should look like this:
http://jimmac.musichall.cz/wipicons/PowerManager/16x16/battery-charged.pngI´ve contributed to these myself (well, just some fixes on the larges
sizes), so it´s cool to hear some feedback. Perhaps grey on grey is not
that optimal, might be a bit hard to spot. I´ll see what I can do about it.